Wednesday, April 16, 2014

George Osborne's report card

In this lecture, delivered just before the 2010 election, Osborne laid out the eight benchmarks under which he said his economic policy should be judged:

We will maintain Britain's AAA credit rating. We will increase saving, business investment and exports as a share of GDP. We will sell in due course the government's stakes in RBS and Lloyds . We will improve Britain's international rankings for tax competitiveness and business regulation with specific measures on corporation tax and regulatory budgets. We will reduce youth unemployment and reduce the number of children in workless households as part of our strategy for tackling poverty and inequality. We will raise the private sector's share of the economy in all regions of the country, especially outside London and the South East. And we will reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions and increase our share of global markets for low carbon technologies. We will raise productivity growth in the public sector to match the best of the private sector.

On my count they've managed one of these eight - raise private sector share of the economy. I think. Given the reduction in the size of the public sector, it kind of follows. There may be similar productivity growth across public and private too - it's been awful economy-wide, so I guess it's not hard for a shrunken public sector to match whatever paltry gains there are in the private sector.Anyway, it's easy to see why the speech has been buried by the Conservative party, although of course it can still be found, here.